Downing Street is now the last refuge of the electorally damned

Where does Gordon Brown find solace in these darkest of times? In Downing Street, a rather desperate numbers game is being played. It starts with an assumption that the Labour vote has stabilised at around 28 per cent. This is rounded up to 30 per cent, and is forecast to sneak up to 32 at the turn of the year — because the race tends to narrow as polling day approaches. Then, with the coming of spring, the flimsiness of the Cameron project will finally become clear to the British people. The legendary Brown street-fighting election machine will swing into action. With one last push, and if the weather is good on election day, Labour hits 35 per cent of the vote and a hung parliament is in the bag.

There are several obvious problems with this as an election strategy. The most obvious is that it is not built on polling evidence, policy arguments or the government’s record — but on wishful thinking alone. Labour strategists will find comfort in the latest poll, which has the party at 29 per cent. But the party had been consistently stuck at 27, with one poll putting them at 25. The Conservatives may struggle to push beyond the 40 per cent mark, yet this is hardly, in itself, reason for celebration.

As a nation’s pity swirled around Gordon Brown like a seasonal storm last week, he must have felt like someone blown off his feet by a force far greater than himself. It is now beyond Shakespearean. A man with failing sight blamed for ‘scrawling his attempt’ to express his condolences to a grieving mother. This is so abject it could have come from a script by Samuel Beckett. In many ways, the ageing Brown and Mandelson bear comparison with Estragon and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, a desperate pair railing at the world to ‘keep the terrible silence at bay’.